


the monster who lives in the woods

by taddymasonLLC



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 05:45:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11937585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taddymasonLLC/pseuds/taddymasonLLC
Summary: what a big heart i have, all the better to love you with





	the monster who lives in the woods

Morty’s been flying as long as he can remember.  Today isn’t the first time he’s ever been shot down, and it won’t be the last, he’s sure of it.  He is sure there will be a next time, because he’s prepared.  He crawls out of the wreckage with a gun in his hand, safety off and chamber loaded, ready for whatever is waiting for him.  

He’s surprised to see that it is, ostensibly at least, human.  Two eyes, two legs, two arms, decidedly male, sickly thin with volcanic ash white skin that sags with age and unruly hair to match, yellow overgrown fingernails on fingers curled around the trigger of what looks like a bazooka, one thin, mean mouth.  

“Give me one good reason not to incinerate you on the spot, you federation spy piece of shit,” he says in perfect English.  

Oh.  Morty had forgotten to take down the holoshields on the ship as he neared the planet, even though his mom had reminded him several times.  It’s his stupid swiss cheese brain that can never retain anything.  

“Not, not federation!” Morty says.  He’s trying to sound authoritative, but it just comes out nervous.  “It’s a disguise!  If you let me reach into my pocket, I can lower the shields.”

“You try anything funny and your ass will be grass faster than you can blink,” says the man, shifting the large gun on his shoulder as if to make a point.  

“Got it,” Morty says.  He reaches the one hand down that isn’t firmly aiming his own gun in front of him and reaches into his back pocket, where the keys to his ship are.  He fishes them out and holds them overhead and presses the button that lowers the disguise shields.  All semblance of what would appear to be a federation ship fades away and reveals Morty’s own.

“Wow,” the man says, and his shoulder slump, allowing the mouth of his large gun to slide toward the ground.  “What a piece of shit.”  

“Thanks,” Morty replies.  He hasn’t put his own gun down.  

“Seriously, I was going to ask how you could be stupid enough to not lower your shields over a rebel exile planet,” the man continues, “but I can see now that it was a less-embarrassing alternative to what your ship actually looks like.  How does that thing even fly?”

Morty had built the ship himself his senior year of high school when he’d been recovering from an injury he’d sustained two months earlier, hardly able to leave the house and bored enough to start fucking around with junk in the garage.  The ship isn’t pretty to look at, but it flies and it’s his, and he’s proud of it.  

“Just fine, asshole,” he says.  He’s half-tempted to shoot the guy in the knee just because he deserves it, but he doesn’t want to start a fight if he doesn’t have to have one, and he doesn’t want to bring any more attention to himself than his fallen ship already will.  “I’m here on business.  I have a delivery for someone on this planet.  Will you please let me go?”

“A delivery?” The man’s eyes go wide, light up like stars are waltzing across them.  “For who?”

“For Mind Your Own Fucking Business,” Morty replies.  The flight was long.  He’s tired.  

“Look, this is a small planet and we’re all retired vigilantes here,” the man says.  He also looks tired.  “We all know each other.  We get together for poker on Tuesdays.  If you tell me who the delivery is for, I can make it for you, and you can repair your ship and get out of here.  It’s safer that way.  There are a lot of… unsavory characters that lurk around here.”

“Yeah, well you’re one of them,” Morty says.  “I’ll go my own way, thank you.”

He steps to the side.  They’re in a field on the edge of the woods Morty’s grandpa supposedly lives in, where he’s supposed to bring the care package sent from his mother.  Despite the reputation of this planet, Morty has been on much more dangerous missions.  He isn’t afraid of the woods, and he isn’t afraid of this man, or anyone else who happens to live here.

The man steps with him.

“At least let me escort you wherever you’re going,” the man says.  He copies Morty step for step when Morty tries to turn again.  “I’m not kidding.  That forest is fucking dangerous.  I know my way around.  I don’t think you do.  Don’t be stupid.”

Morty frowns at him, jaw grinding.  

“I shot your ship down because I thought you were Federation.  You’re not.  I feel bad.  Let me help you,” the man says.  “I can help you.”

He isn’t going to give up.  Morty will have to be on alert anyway, so he might as well, he thinks as the last of his resolve gives way to begrudging acceptance.

“Who are you?” he asks.

The man takes one step forward.  His eyes are pale like his skin and his hair, ancient and cold even when reflecting the small flames that lick at the hood of Morty’s ship.  “I am the monster that lives in the woods.”

 

* * *

 

The monster that lives in the woods does not look like a monster.  He looks like a person.  Morty is still convinced that he is. 

“Well, that would be your planetary bias,” the monster says.  “When you think monster, you think  _ alien _ .  You think  _ not from earth _ .  You think  _ six tentacles  _ and  _ tesseracts  _ and  _ lays eggs in my asshole.   _ Real monsters don’t look like monsters.  That’s the most frightening thing about us.”

“Yeah and what makes you a monster?” Morty wheezes as he follows the monster’s quick stroll down an unlit dirt path, the reflection of several moons the only thing illuminating their way.  “The fact that you walk so fucking fast?”

“No,” the monster says.  “I had an accident.”

Morty’s trying to think of what kind of Peter Parker shit this guy’s been through when they’re attacked.  Whatever attacks them has the build of a hyena, but three times bigger, stockier, with scales and bile that pools in the corner of their double-hinged jaws.  Morty is fast enough to shoot three of them immediately, but they’re still somehow faster, and he’s on his back with the butt of his gun against the roof of a beast’s mouth trying to keep himself from being eaten in a second.

The monster cuts the beast’s head in half with a well-placed kick behind the eyes.  His shoes have blades of lasers that protrude from the toe, that Morty hates to admit look really cool.  

Morty ends up covered in beast bile that smells like a fart a rotten egg took.  The monster ends up clean, rolling his human eyes before giving Morty a begrudging hand up off the ground.

“Told you it was dangerous, dipshit,” he says.

They’re attacked by a flock of birds that are nothing but wings and teeth and teeth and wings later, and Morty manages to get them both out of it with a laser net he programmed into his watch after a fishing trip gone wrong last year.

“Told you I could take care of myself,” he replies.

 

* * *

Morty’s never met his grandpa. He’s supposed to be the smartest person, the smartest human in existence.  He’s supposed to be calculating, and terrible, but he has a good heart.  That’s what Morty’s mom has told him, anyway, that he’s a good person deep down, he just is too smart to stay out of trouble, and that’s why he lives here.  

“Do you know him?” Morty asks the monster.  “Rick Sanchez?”

“Yeah,” the monster says.  “He’s a real piece of work.”

 

* * *

 

“Tell me about earth,” the monster asks.  “It’s been a long time.”

He doesn’t clarify how long, so Morty assumes longer than he’s been alive.  He tells the monster about the internet and cellphones (“wow, exciting,” the monster says, not even trying to hide his yawn), his favorite artisanal ice cream shop (“okay, now i’m listening”), how Seattle lost the Supersonics but the Seahawks have been good under Carroll (“you lost me again”).  He goes into his personal life; first girlfriend, first boyfriend, high school in Seattle, but college in Boston, and a semester abroad in Hong Kong.  Morty works part-time at a tapas bar, but he’s been doing missions for the intergalactic resistance since he was a teenager.  He had an accident his senior year that left him in a coma for three months and seriously fucked up both his short-term and long-term memory, so actually what he’s saying right now, he says, isn’t that reliable.  It’s just what he knows to be true.  

“I said tell me about earth,” the monster groans.  “Don’t tell me about you.”

“It’s earth as I know it,” Morty replies.  “What about you?”

“What about me?” the monster repeats.  “I’m a million years old and very tired.”

“A million?” Morty says.  “You don’t look a day over three-hundred.”

The monster bristles, and tries not to smile, and Morty counts it as a success.

 

* * *

 

When they reach Morty’s grandpa’s house, there’s no one home.

“Give me the package and I’ll hang out,” the monster says.  He reaches his hand out and all of his knuckles are knobbed and crooked with age, bulbed at the joints.  “You should get going.  I’m sure your family is worried about you.”

Morty looks at him unevenly, questioning.  “Didn’t you say it would be dangerous for me to walk through the woods alone?”

“Yeah, well, you kind of proved me wrong with those birds, so--”

“I’m staying,” Morty says, and he takes out the key his mother let him borrow instead and unlocks the front door to the lonely, small cabin in the dark thicket of the woods.  

“Fine,” the monster says, as he follows him inside. “Dumbass.”

“I didn’t say you could come in,” Morty says.  He’s turning on the lights as he gropes his way along the walls of the tall-ceilinged room that could serve as a living room if it weren’t so sparse, clean and sterile.

“I know your grandpa,” the monster says.  “We have business to talk about as long as I’m here.  I’ll wait with you.”

The monster trails behind Morty as Morty walks into the kitchen and takes a small cube from out of his pocket and places it on the counter next to the sink.  The monster looks at it as Morty opens up cupboards looking for a glass.  

“That?” Morty catches the monster looking.  “It’s micro-technology.  I came up with the formula to make these my second year of college.  It makes transporting things easier, less conspicuous.  Press the button on the side and it blows back up to normal size.  This is just a care package my mom made for my grandpa with a few things he requested for whatever he’s doing here in exile.”

“Smart,” the monster croaks out, like it’s been tortured out of him.

Morty finds the glasses and pour himself water from the tap.  He smells it and then looks at the monster, questioning.  “Is the water here safe to drink?”

“Do you think I’m going to give you an honest answer?”

Morty shrugs and takes a big, long gulp, and ends up downing the entire glass, before pouring another one.  “Wow, didn’t realize how thirsty I was.”

The monster is staring at him like he broke the glass on the floor after finishing it.  

“What?” he asks.  

The monster shakes his head.  “Nothing.  You’re tall.”

“So’s my grandpa, apparently.”

“You’re taller,” the monster says.

“Oh.”  The room is still.  Morty takes another big drink of water, but he doesn’t look away from the monster.  

“Smarter too,” the monster says eventually.  “Don’t tell him I said that.  He’ll never give you the satisfaction of believing it if you told him.”

“Thanks,” Morty says.  “I’ll remember that.”

The monster doesn’t fidget, doesn’t check his yellowing nails under the warm kitchen lights.  They look more like claws than they do nails, Morty thinks.

“So, what should we do while we wait?” the monster asks, looking at his claws and scratching his stomach with them.

Morty pours himself a third glass of water. “Wanna fuck?”

 

* * *

 

“Oh,” the monster says, tongue grinding like a serpent’s into Morty’s hole as he pushes Morty’s legs up by the fat of his thighs, claws digging into the backs of Morty’s knees.  “Oh, what long legs you have.  Fuck.  What a great ass, Jesus, you taste filthy.”

Morty moans, his arm curled around his eyes.  His toes curl over the monster’s shoulder.

“Let me see them,” the monster says, crawling up his body, slippery, loose old skin dragging against Morty’s dick and stomach.  He pushes Morty’s arm away, and Morty blinks up at him.

“Oh, what big eyes you have, Morty.”

 

* * *

 

Morty wakes up in his grandpa’s bed, blankets curled around his crusty, slick legs.  He can hear voices from the loft overhead.  

“I know, sweetie, I know you think this is helping, but it’s not.  His memory isn’t coming back, and I think in the long run it’s just going to traumatize him more,” Rick is saying to Beth over a scrambled telecom link.  Morty peeks over the edge of the loft where he’s climbed halfway up the ladder.  Rick is wearing a pair of loose pajama bottoms but no shirt, and he’s scratching at his shoulder.  “You can’t keep sending him here.”

“Dad,” Mom says over the link.

“Rick?” Morty says from the ladder.

“Shit!” Rick says, turning around and catching him in the blue-green glow of the screen.  “Sweetie, I gotta go.  We’ll finish this later.”  

The screen blips out, and Rick turns to look at Morty through the darkness.  He’s the monster.  Rick is the monster.  Deep down, Morty thinks, he always knew that.

“Rick,” he says again, because he doesn’t know what else to say.  His hands are tremblings and gripping the ladder railing too tight.  “Fuck, fuck, oh shit, fuck, Rick--”

“--Morty, calm down--”

“-- _ Shit _ , are you kidding me, G-G-Geez, Rick, are you, are you,” he says, words slipping clumsy out of his mouth like they haven’t in years, not since the accident, at least not that he can remember.  Rick is loading a small gun next to him with something Morty can’t make out, but this feels familiar too.

“Calm down, Morty,” he says again, very evenly, taking aim.  He shoots Morty in his naked shoulder. 

Morty falls.

 

* * *

 

“How’s your head?” Rick asks him when he wakes up bound to a chair.  His mouth is cotton dry and Rick puts a straw to his mouth and he drinks furiously, wanting to scream.  Rick has had the decency to put underwear on him.  “You bumped it when you fell.”

“Fuck!” Morty screams. “Fuck, fuck, you piece of shit!  Fuck!” 

“Yeah, I know, great to see you too, Morty,” Rick says.  “Now tell me, what do you remember?”  

Morty remembers Rick.  Not completely, but he’s there now, filling in all the big spaces of Morty’s adolescence.  He taught Morty how to drive.  He took Morty to Blips and Chitz and they fought the Federation together.  His best friend was Bird Person, his favorite ice cream flavor was mint chocolate chip, his favorite drink was cheap vodka cut with gasoline on the rocks, and  _ fuck _ .

Morty is crying.  

“Honestly, this is your mother’s fault,” Rick says.  “She’s the one who’s supposed to make these deliveries, and she keeps sending you.”

_ Keeps sending _ .  “How many times?”

“Has she sent you?”  Rick pauses for a second.  “Ten.”

“And how many times have we,” Morty says, choking on the end.  He can’t finish the sentence.

“Eleven,” Rick says.  “The first time was before this.  Is the reason for this.”

His senior year in high school.  He remembers this too.  “You were trying to use the detoxification technology to isolate different parts of your consciousness.  You were trying to program your brain so you could turn parts of you on and off at will.  You--something w-w-went wrong, and you, you, me, we--”

“I’m a monster, Morty,” Rick says.  

“Yeah,” Morty agrees.  “You sure fucking are, Rick.”

“I’m going to make you forget again, okay, Morty?  I’m gonna make you forget, and you’re going to be okay again.  It’s going to be okay,” Rick says.  He sounds as gentle as the needle he sticks into Morty’s neck.

 

* * *

 

Morty’s been flying as long as he can remember.  He’s been shot down before and he’ll be shot down again.  It’s just a part of life working for the rebellion.  But he’s always managed to get out of situations, and fix up his garbage heap of a ship and get home not looking worse for the wear.

His mom is smiling expectantly at him in the kitchen when he gets home.  “How was your trip, sweetie?”

“Fine,” he says.  He can’t really remember.  Stupid swiss cheese brain.  “Good.  I’m fine.”


End file.
